I accepted my predicament. I was no longer human. I was just a monstrosity, born from the rib of a greater monstrosity. I would no longer fight my biology, fight my being. If I did, I would only hinder my mission.
Mercer was responsible. For everything. And to beat him, I would have to be the very thing I despised.
Funny. This was the Blackwatch ideal. The end justifies the means.
I was more of a Blackwatch soldier now then I ever was. I was more determined, more able, and much more sacrificing. I would sacrifice this whole city, the whole Marine Corps, the entire Blackwatch unit, and what ever remained of my soul, all to destroy Alex Mercer.
I looked down at my new arms, twisted, morphed, and deformed into the claws that Mercer himself wielded. They were the first step to my biological success. The next step awaited me at the hive a few blocks down the road.
I began running across the rooftops, picking up speed as I vaulted from building to building. My body was responding to the environment instantaneously, becoming stronger as it was asked to. If I consumed more hunters, more walkers, and even the military attacking the hive, I would have much more information for my genetics to feed upon.
I stopped at a rooftop right across from the infected hive. Marines in tanks were attacking the hive, ground troops fighting off the walkers. A helicopter passed over me, firing a few rounds across the sores in the side of the building.
The stolen memories reminded me of the usefulness of operating aircraft, but also reminded me of how easily Mercer could destroy such things. They were next to useless.
The only thing I would need from this conflict is information, and DNA. Artificially accelerated evolution.
I dropped to the street, drawing the attention of the marines fighting off the walkers. The tanks were preoccupied with the hunters, and wouldn't do much to me unless I attacked them directly.
I grabbed the first moving thing near me, a walker. It was a pathetic excuse for an infected soldier, flailing around dumbly, gargling its own blood.
I wrapped a claw around its head and squeezed it into mush. Consuming was becoming easier now. I barely noticed the passing images of a virus crazed mind.
A marine fired upon me, bullets ricocheting off my shield. He was next. I ran to him, careful to not just ram him with the shield. I diced up his body, hearing him yell for a short while as he disappeared in me. I gained more from him than I did from the walker. Including a chance encounter he had with Mercer.
I saw through the marine's eyes as he looked up, lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Mercer as he seemed to drift through air. He seemed to float like a piece of paper. These thoughts brought an onslaught of memories of childhood experiments.
Gliding. Mercer seemed to be able to make his biomass lighter than air for a short moment, and glide through the air as though he were a base jumper. That would come in handy.
I came back to the present, hearing the collective roars of the hunters being spawned by the hive.
I looked over to see one hunter caught up in the crossfire of two tanks and a few soldiers. He was weakened enough for me to consume right now.
I ran to him as fast as I could, pummeling through the soldiers with my shield. I jumped to it, knocking it down, and began the process of killing it and consuming it.
I felt the same rush of power. My body felt even more powerful, denser. I felt as If I was carrying more within than I could possibly hold. And with this density of biomass, I felt a state of power I couldn't have ever fantasized about.
Strangely enough, I even felt relaxed. My body felt right, now, almost complete, as If I had been striving to reach this state of being. I looked at the tank that had began firing its machine gun at me.
As if by instinct, I rammed my claw into the ground, easily burying it. I felt a large amount of my mass slither through the ground as if it were loose sand, and erupted through the ground under the tank in multiple black spires. The tank was pierced through multiple times, and something within it combusted. The spires retreated back to me.
An explosive shell made contact with my shield and shattered it. I recovered from the blast and performed the same attack. It felt strange to move my mass so far from my body, yet, it was a welcome change. I dispatched the rest of the marines panicking in the area and turned my attention to the hive.
The whole thing pulsed sickly, throwing another hunter out into the world, as if it sensed my presence.
I tried the same trick with the hunter, but missed. It was too fast to get caught up in the tangle of spires coming up from the ground. The mass was too slow in coming back to me, so the hunter had a good opportunity to swing its filthy claws at me.
I flew back a ways, but recovered. The thing was already charging at me again. I rolled to the side and began slashing at it, creating gashes and stab wounds. It swatted me away again.
It was beginning to move slowly now, so I tried to get it caught in the groundspike again. I managed to clip it, but it dodged the majority of the spires. It got a few swipes on me again while my body retrieved the biomass.
I jumped up, swiveling myself around the hunter's neck so I was on its back, and began stabbing it repeatedly in the neck. I jumped down, dragging my claw down its spine as I did so. It tumbled forward and rolled onto its back, blood gushing from its wounds.
I leaped through the air and stabbed it through the face, tendrils reaching out of me to consume it.
The now familiar sense of power came to me, increasing my mass even further, opening new pathways in my biology. I felt more comfortable in my body, more in control.
I looked up at the hive, still pulsating and gushing out red material from its sores.
I jumped up to the roof, an idea brewing in my head. I had learned how to move my own biomass out of my body. I could take it a step further, and tap into that overfilled reservoir I now had.
I began bringing that dense biomass from deep within my body, began making it flow outside of my body. That seemed to unleash a power that I could barely contain. I struggled with my own body, trying to contain and control the flow of mass. I then rammed my fists into the roof of the hive and let it flow out. Spires, larger than myself erupted all around me, ripping through the concrete and organic material this building was made out of with ease.
The building didn't collapse, as I thought it would. I hadn't unleashed enough biomass to do so. I still felt a large amount within me, so I began trying to bring it out again.
A loud, ear splitting roar stopped me. I could actually feel the air around me ripple from the power of the roar, the whole building shaking. I looked behind me to see something trying to rip itself out of one of the holes my spire had caused.
It seemed like a hunter. But it sounded more fierce, more monstrous.
The creature exploded from the rooftop, landing heavily in front of me. I actually lost my balance from its landing. It roared right in my face, both of its mouths unleashing sound waves that pushed me back, off of the roof of the hive.
It pushed me off a building, and caused damage to me, with its voice!
I barely managed to land on my feet, looking up as the monster leaped down.
It landed far behind me and roared again.
What I was seeing was impossible. All the Leader Hunters disappeared after Greene had been killed by Mercer. There was no report from anyone in the field seeing another leader hunter on the entire island. They were assumed to have been killed by Mercer, or to have died after the demise of Greene.
This thing must have been hiding all this time, waiting to make its presence known. I had to find a way to kill it, or it would kill me without hesitation.
My claws wouldn't be enough to take it down. I would have to travel down those new biological pathways to find a way to kill it. I began to gather strength to me arms, reinforcing them. The mass around my claws and up to my elbow had become more smooth, and a lighter shade. I had increased my muscle mass to more than twice my full strength. Hopefully that would be enough.
It was already charging at me, making craters with each step. I jumped out of the way of its attack, only to be caught up in the aftershocks. I had never seen a leader hunter this close before, and I never imagined it being this strong.
I moved to attack, only to be hit by another ground shattering smack. I wasn't fast enough to avoid the next one, or the next one. I felt drained from this thing's onslaught. It jumped back, its body heaving.
It had tired itself out. I charged at it, gathering strength to the new mass of muscles I had conjured up. I exerted that strength in full, bringing my claws slashing across the creature's body. With the added strength, they were not only able to pierce the hunter's hide, but also rip out chunks of its flesh.
I took a few more swipes before the thing pushed me away roughly.
It seemed to look at me intensely with its eyeless face, mouths open and constantly emitting growls.
I began gathering even more strength to my arms. More than I was capable of holding. As the beast charged to me, I tried to slow down time. Everything seemed to be in slow motion to me. My brain was working faster. I steadied myself, and positioned my body perfectly, waiting for the right moment to strike.
I waited until the thing's arm was raised above me, about to come down in a bone crushing slam. I swung my claw with all the force in my body, right through the creature's arm.
Time caught up and the hunter's arm was severed cleanly. The limb twitched as it bled out a little.
The leader reeled back, blood gushing out of its stump of an arm. I delivered another strike into its side, causing a gash so deep it severed its spine.
It fell to its side, attempting to right itself with its remaining limbs. The very moment it managed to get up, I was on top of it, attempting to consume it. With a severed spine, it shouldn't have even been moving. As I tried to break its neck, I noticed that it seemed to have two sets of vertebrae going through it. It reached back and pulled me off of it.
The thing was still moving because it had two spinal columns. But it wouldn't last long. It was still weak.
I ran back to it, breaking its neck to weaken it further, then breaking its remaining spine. Those tendrils were becoming my best friends. They pulled in the creature's mass as it shrieked piercingly.
What surprised me was that everything went black. I didn't feel the sensation of power as I sapped the beast's life force. I felt it resisting.
No, that wasn't right. It felt as if something were resisting through the creature itself. Like a game of tug-a-war.
The more I attempted to pull in the blackness, the more the blackness resisted. We were at a constant stalemate.
"You… Are not him."
A voice spoke, echoing in the darkness that surrounded me. It was raspy and tired, yet distinctly female.
"Who are you?" The voice didn't answer right away. I could feel what ever it was move closer to me. Not physically though. It all felt like it was in my head, only closer.
"I am your mother."
The words didn't make sense to me, but a shiver ran through my body, and every cell seemed to suddenly be on edge. A quiet whisper went through me, penetrating not only my mind, but my very biology.
"You are my mother."
I didn't say it. It felt like a collective whisper from every cell in my body, yearning to find the source of the voice like a lost child.
It was the first time in the past couple days that I felt betrayed by my biology. That sense of control was gone, replaced by fear that I would lose myself again. I feared being part of that collective that almost claimed me the first time I died.
"You are like him... Have been touched by him… But you were not born from him."
"What are you talking about?"
"My wayward child…"
"Mercer?"
"Yes…"
The force suddenly gave out, allowing what was left of the leader hunter's body to slip into me. The darkness lifted and I was back in the physical world.
What garbled mess that settled into the beast's mind became my own. I saw images of Elizabeth Greene, of the city and its red mist, and multiple leader hunters.
The images became more focused, and I saw through a section of a collective. Mercer was attacking the whole, destroying it piece by piece. I could feel Greene's commands through the collective, controlling it. The collective was on the verge of death, and Greene knew it. Once the supports went out, Greene pulled back what remained of the collective and ripped a piece of herself away, creating a puppet. She retreated with the rest of the collective and went deeper than any Bloodtox could ever reach. The puppet fell to Mercer, and deceived him with unclear images of Greene's past.
The creature's memory seemed to stop there, becoming the blurry collective of red filtered images, ending abruptly as I killed it.
The message was clear. Elizabeth Greene survived, and continues to live under ground. There was no telling how large her army truly was.
The walkers and what remained of the hunters on the surface, they seemed to be going through the routine of infection, repeating the same pattern mindlessly. It was a farce. They were only covering for Greene, making it seem like her invisible hand of leadership had disappeared. Even the almighty Mercer had been deceived.
But she said something else. She said I had not been born from him.
What did she mean by that?